HOME PAGE

Welcome to my
'vanity site' directed towards
fans, students and those embroiled in the informational economy of Black popular music from Jamaica
and America c1940's to 1970's. If you have an interest in anything on this site and you
want to get in touch, or to correct any mistakes (there are probably many) or
whatever, go here: mail@johnnyspencer.info
Please give the mail a relevant subject head: like Records, and not just
Re. or any of the other insincere headings that stupid Spam mailers use, as it will
be deleted without opening.

There are two main categories on this
site:
American: R&B, Blues and Soul from the 1940s through 1970s.
Jamaican: Boogie, Ska, Rock Steady, Reggae, Dub; from the 1950s through 1970s.

After the two main categories their are other (subjective) sub categories. It [the site] can be categorized as combination of diverse
components which interact both serially and in parallel. I have used a
particular cataloguing system for really no other reason than my own convenience,
the complexity of the site is however deliberate. At it's simplest this might
just mean 'cross placement' i.e. you may find on the page 'Girls
With Soul', a group record like Stay
In My Lonely Arms that could also be on the page 'Soul Groups'. Even more cross placement is found in the Reggae section;
while there is a Studio 1 page, Studio1 productions do, inevitably, crop up
on all the other pages, similarly while the Rock Steady page is all Rock Steady,
other Rock Steady cuts can be found elsewhere, like I
Am Still In Love. On another level of complexity, I am bringing to bear my
various interests to the site in the hope that through discovery it increases the
understanding, for me at least, of one or a group of previously unrelated phenomena.

Lastly, for what they are worth, anything of mine on this site is
not
copyrighted, feel free to copy or 'adopt' anything, I would only ask, if it is
for public use, a citation in return.

To keep this site going without
resorting to advertising or any other intrusive methods I have inserted this
donation button. If anyone feels they have enjoyed their time on this site and
can afford to make a donation please do so and I will be much obliged.

O bliss of the collector, bliss of the man of
leisure! . . . For inside him there are spirits, or at least little genii, which
have seen to it that for a collector - and I mean a real collector, a
collector as he ought to be - ownership is the most intimate relationship that
one can have with objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives
in them. So I have erected one of his dwellings, with records as the
building stones, before you, and now he is going to disappear inside, as is only
fitting.